2015 Update!

Yup, I am terrible at blogging, lets just accept that now shall we? Good.

Ok so lets start out with what I actively did today. I'm going out to Fwigf tomorrow and so will be able to give a better update about what is going on there after I check it.

Today I made two quarts of refrigerator pickled peas. The vines I had in my backyard had been... lets say neglected... for the last couple of weeks. Which means everything bloomed, and ripened, and I wasn't harvesting. So those two quarts are all I'm getting out of my pea plants this season. They feel they have succeeded in their mission of "reproduce damnit!" and so are now going to die off.

Note: Harvest your food as it becomes ripe. This will keep your plants producing far longer. Learn from my failures.

I also made a small pint jar of what I will now call DEATH SAUCE. Yes the caps are required. What is DEATH SAUCE? DEATH SAUCE is what happens when you take about 20 peppers of a stupidly hot variety (say 80k scu) and pack them into a pint jar with some brine and garlic powder and proceed to ignore it on your counter for two weeks. Added fun? Add in some OTHER stupidly hot peppers as those ripen. Because you hate your GI tract and want your sinuses super clean every time you open the jar.

I also thinned out my carrot pot so hopefully I'll actually get some carrots out of it and not just spindly, twisted, bits of orange sorrow. We'll see.

My front garden is doing lovely. The pumpkin vines are nice and strong. they aren't flowering yet but it's still early for them. The brussel sprout plant is doing ok, it's growing. Something (some kind of beetle) is eating my cabbages, but I'm not sure what.

So yeah. That's home. We'll see what's going on at Fwigf in the morning.

Jerky 2: The reckoning

Ok, so there was something I left out of my little expose (can't get the accent on blogger drat it!) on jerky the other day. Something I'd assumed was obvious, yet apparently needed to have been articulated to Husband.

When slicing meat for jerky, slice it thin. Otherwise it doesn't dry out correctly. Which then leads to having to bake it in the oven at 390 for about 30 minutes to kill off anything living in it and to properly dry it out. After it spent 12 hours in a dehydrator. And I'm still a bit suspicious of whether or not I should eat it. It looks and feels like jerky. It breaks apart like jerky. However food borne illnesses are a thing and I'm not sure I've avoided them entirely.

Food science friends, please advise.

Other thing I made the other day as Peppa Sauce.

Peppa Sauce is apparently a Southern Staple. It is hot peppers in vinegar. That's it. I had hot peppers and apple cider vinegar, and garlic. My husband likes spicy things so I figured why the heck not and thew a bottle together. Specifically a fancy bottle.

This fancy bottle

I found the recipe (such as it is) here: http://ourdailybrine.com/southern-pepper-sauce-recipe/

The changes I made were:

Apple cider vinegar instead of white wine vinegar (I'm on a budget I had to work with what I had)

A mix of Bird's Eye Peppers (7 or 8 of them), Jalapenos (about 10) and some whole dried red peppers for color (a handful 'cause they're wimpy). I cut each pepper in half so the vinegar could get to all of the rind, and left the seeds in for added burn. I also tossed in about 1 tsp of minced garlic and Husband wanted ground black pepper added because he likes black pepper and we didn't have whole pepper corns. 

It's been sitting on my counter for two days now. It has opinions. It would like to share these opinions with you. Mostly by clearing out your sinuses when you sniff it. I wonder how it'll taste.

Potatoes. Boil 'em, mash 'em, stick 'em in a stew

Just don't try to grow them in plastic buckets.

This was my first attempt at potatoes. I will be attempting again next year. Potatoes are a thing with me. I get grumpy if I don't have potato products for several days. My husband goes and gets me french fries the way some partners buy chocolate. Growing potatoes isn't so much an attempt to cut the food bill as it is an attempt to keep living with me acceptable. We planted two varieties, Russet (the potato-who-should-not-be) and Blue potatoes (the ones that are purple all the way though. I like colors. Deal with it.)We decided to try mounding the potatoes in 5 gallon plastic paint buckets.

Do not do this. This is a poor decision.

My poor potatoes are cooking in their buckets. The plastic is keeping too much heat, and reflecting too much light onto the undersides of the leaves. I've lost 2 or 3 plants out of the 7 I planted. The ones that are still alive are sheltered and shaded by my pumpkins. The pumpkins are trying to take over the garden and in doing so have sent out vines between the potato buckets. The potatoes who live in the shade of their leaves are still alive. I figure they're being kept cooler and the sun isn't reflecting off their plastic prisons to roast them alive.

So yeah. Next year we're doing wood or cloth. No more plastic.

Safety and pickles

Today we are going to discuss something newly near and dear to my heart: kitchen safety. As I'm sure you're aware your kitchen is a very dangerous place. It's chock full of things like knives and stoves and other things that can either cut or burn you, or give you a rather squashed big toe. You should avoid getting cut, or burned, or squashed. It's generally unpleasant. Generally just be aware of your surroundings, avoid grabbing sharp things by the sharp end, or  hot things by the hot end, and you should be ok.

This PSA brought to you by: Mia is a dip who missed the jar and poured a ladle full of boiling brine all over her left hand and wrist. Remember my dears: Mia, screwing up so you don't have to!

Moving right along, I made three different types of pickles today.  And I still have 30 some odd cukes to deal with later this week. The aforementioned burn caused an early end to apicklypse  today. I made four jars of Alton Brown Bread and Butter Pickles, four jars of dill pickles, and a dozen tiny gift jars of my great grandmother's chunk pickles. I will share none of those recipes exactly (because the only one that is *mine* is Nana G's chunk pickles and she passed away in 2008. I got the recipe two weeks ago. It's 2014.) I will however give you a bastardized version of sweet pickles that I am going to attempt next.

Fwigf Sweet Present Pickles

You will need:

12 half-pint jars
About 6 or 7 good sized cucumbers
12 Allspice seed/ball things
Tumeric
1/2 cup Brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
3 cinnamon sticks (broken into quarters)
celery seed
mustard seed (I used Garlic Mustard seeds, I'll explain those later)
1/4 sweet onion
1 1/2 cups apple cider vinegar
2 tablespoons Sea salt
2 cups water
a caner of some kind.

First things first. Sterilize your jars and lids. Combine the vinegar, salt, water, and sugar (both kinds) and bring it to a boil. This is your brine. Wash your cucumbers and slice them up into 1/4-1/2 inch slices. Cut your onion into chunks. Into the jars place 1 allspice seed/ball thing, 1/4 of a cinnamon stick, a couple pieces of onion, a pinch of celery seed, a pinch of mustard seed, and a pinch of tumeric. Pack your cucumber slices into the jars and cover with the sweet brine. Screw on the lids and process in your water bath caner. I did about 10 minutes at a rolling boil. Remove and set on a towel to cool.

Now then, what the heck is garlic mustard?

Garlic mustard is a noxious weed. It is invasive and very Very prolific right on the edges of forests. It is also edible, tasty, and packed full of nutrients. It comes into season in the early summer, the leaves are tasty and you can treat them like spinach, the roots are also edible but I haven't tried them. In the mid-late summer their seed pods mature. The seeds make a very strong, very tasty, mustard. The flavor is very close to a spicy brown mustard with a hint of garlic after taste. So, delicious, nutritious, free, and doing your local ecosystem a favor by removing it? Yes. Go eat garlic mustard. It's out of season now, but next summer you'll be prepared. Won't you?

Random garden update

AKA wherein I have no idea what is happening.


Accurate.

I went out to Fwigf the other day and harvested ALL THE CUCUMBERS EVER (as referenced in my previous post). But I realized I forgot to give an update on everything else.

First and foremost: I HAVE CORN! Or rather I have corn developing on some of the stalks. One is stalk is being an over acheiver and attempting to put out four ears instead of the two that it should. But hopefully by the end of next month I'll have a few small ears of tasty blue corn.. We shall see.

The tomatoes are... doing well but the trellis needs some rethinking. The wind comes in from one side of the garden pretty steadily. And it has shoved all the plants to the left. Which would be fine if the were in cages, but since they are supported by a rope trellis they are just sliding along the rope and shoving the plant next to them over. They're all doing fine, no one is dying and everyone is producing. But the one furthest to the left has been shoved off the trellis entirely and is now growing along the ground. Next year the tomatoes get cross pieces AND the thicker stalks get tied to the trellis.

The potatoes are flowing! Holy crap potato flowers are beautiful! Little delicate purple stars with bright yellow centers. This makes me happy. Sadly we've lost one potato plant (Husband broke it while mounding it into the bucket) and we have a second one that isn't happy. But losing two out of the 6 planted isn't bad at all. Russet the potato who should not be is still living and growing.

My beans are thriving now that we added cross pieces to their trellis. I have a feeling they are going to end up forming a solid wall of vegetation and that's ok with me. They'd shade out the peas and spinach which can tolerate it.

My one pepper plant is flowering. So we'll see what we get from that. And the spinach is growing. But spinach can be blanched and frozen, so that's a green I'll keep.

My pumpkins are insisting that the chain link fence is a trellis. I can not convince them otherwise.

The great Krautastraphy.

Guys? Remember that lettuce kraut recipe I shared  the other week? (If you don't here's the link to the post: http://fwigf.blogspot.com/2014/07/dealing-with-lettuce.html)

Don't do it.

No seriously. Not kidding. It was scary and gross. I ended up throwing it out without tasting any and my bowls are green and flies won't even go near my trash.

This was poor decision theater all over my pantry. I can not recommend this. Which means my beloved darlings? You have to either eat your lettuce fresh or compost it. I think I'm going to just compost it and I am NOT growing lettuce next year.

The Ballad of Jerusalem Artichokes.

My darlings today we are going to discuss something that is unexpectedly dear to my heart. Invasive species. Nutrient hogs, enemies of the free peoples of Fwigf...Jerusalem Artichokes.

Jerusalem Artichokes are (in theory) a cash crop. They sell for roughly $6-$10 a pound. They grow Everywhere, and propagate like horseradish. If there is the smallest bit of them left in the ground a new plant will grow. They are impossible to fully get rid of and are heavier feeders than corn. You either need to heavily fertilize to avoid depleted soil or keep removing them forever and ever amen.

We hates them precious.

"But Mia!" I imagine you saying "your garden has a rule against planting invasive species. Jerusalem Artichokes aren't native to Eastern New York! How did Fwigf fall victim to this scourge?" Well friend, I'm going to tell you.

Once upon a decade ago, one of the gardeners in the community garden where Fwigf is located saw a wonderful new vegetable. They were easy to grow! Tasty! Nutritious! Expensive! And her little gardener's heart started beating faster. She spoke with the garden organizers about bringing this new, rare, never-before-seen plant into the community garden. They agreed.

On one condition.

She must contain them in a lined raised bed. With chicken wire around them. Because there had been the rumbles of rumors of their darker nature. Our intrepid gardener agreed.  She built their box, set up the chicken wire, and planted her demon plants Artichokes. I like to imagine a shadow fell over the garden that day.

For a time all was peaceful. Her plants grew, her artichokes were contained, she was pleased with how things were progressing. Then the squirrels came. Her wire was insufficient to keep the fuzzy minions of evil out. They liberated the artichokes from their well deserved isolation. One by one the free plots of the garden fell victim to the curse.

Some resisted! They covered their gardens in plastic over the winter, in hopes of preventing the artichokes from returning. But alas, it was too late. The artichokes had laid firm claim to all lands within the confines of the garden. The garden was lost.

And so my darlings, we continue to fight this scourge to this day. And so I beg of you, whether planting in your own yard or a community garden, a container or open field, please, for the love of peas and carrots, do NOT plant invasive species. Check before you plant to see if what you're putting in will reseed itself, and if  so under what conditions.

If planting something like horseradish that grows a new plant for every cutting? Make sure when you harvest you don't leave any in the ground. Do not plant anything that will have those who follow you (this can also be future you) laying a curse upon your name.

On The Subject of Peas

I like peas. Snow Peas, Snap Peas, shucking peas, peas that come frozen in a bag. All of them are tasty when cooked correctly. Or raw. But I digress.

Peas are a cool weather veggie. This means that they need to be planted early, come into season in the early summer, and die in the heat of summer. Even in the Northeast.

What I'm trying to do is get around this. I'm trying to keep my peas cooler and alive all summer and try to get a fall crop. What I'm doing to achieve this in my garden at home is keep the peas shaded by my cucumbers. That's helping to keep the temperature down for them. This appears to be working (in combination with the oddly cool weather we've had for the last couple of weeks) since my home peas are blossoming a second time and I have a few more pea pods forming. One or two have fully developed peas in them. I'm letting those age a bit longer on the vine while I research some seed saving methods.

At Fwigf I planted a trellis of pole beans right behind my peas. Which means once the beans become mature they'll provide my tiny peas shade and let them grow for a fall harvest.However when I tried to plant peas in Fwigf most of them didn't live. Only two plants came up. My advice? Get your peas in the ground *before* the average temperature is over 80 degrees Fahrenheit in the shade. But I'm still trying. if it works then I'm trying to save the seeds to plant my heat hardy double producers. If not then I'll try a different starter strain next year.

Peas don't need a lot of fertilizer. So they're an excellent thing to plant after a heavy feeder like corn. They'll do just fine with almost depleted soil, you just want to add a little manure to help them out. Really the only care they need is: planting before it gets hot (you can direct sow peas before the last frost if you really want to), water, and something to climb. That's it. They are the most low maintenance veggie I've ever tried to grow. Carrots are harder.

You can also grow peas in a container if you don't have a lot of space. They do well (in my experience) in containers with tiny trellises. You don't get as big a harvest, and the pods themselves don't get as big, but you can grow peas in your window with minimum investment. I'd only suggest 1 plant per 3 inches in a deep pot. That information isn't coming from anywhere specific, just my own observations with pea plants. Remember if you're growing indoors you may have to manually pollinate your flowers to get pods. Since I'm assuming you don't keep bees, butterflies, or other pollinating insects indoors as a general rule.

So I mentioned 'cooked correctly' up above. Cooked correctly does NOT EVER mean boiled into a sad and tasteless mush. When you do that you make your peas cry. You can't see the tears in the boiling water, but they're there. There are so many ways you can eat peas! Shuck them and steam the peas themselves without the pod, or toss the peas into a soup or salad raw. Or blanch them and freeze them. I have been known to eat frozen peas in the middle of the summer instead of popcicles. I mentioned I have a love of peas. Don't judge me. If you get a variety that you can eat the whole pod you suddenly have almost limitless options! I eat them raw by the handful more often than not. However if you can resist that urge you can pickle them (just treat them like cucumbers and pickle them whole. Soooooo good).

If you must cook your pea pods here are two ideas. Both of these are great either as side dishes or garnishes for salads.

Barbecue Pea Pockets

You will need:

Tinfoil
Olive Oil
Salt
Pepper
Dried red pepper flakes
Garlic powder
Sugar Snap or Snow Peas

Lay out a sheet of foil. Oil it lightly. Put your raw peas on the lightly oiled foil and season to taste with the aforementioned spices. Here comes the hard part, folding the foil into a packet.

Take the long edges of your foil and bring them up to touch in the center. Roll them down together until they are firmly against your peas. Next roll each of he short edges in until they are firmly against your peas without tearing the foil. You should have a roughly rectangular shape. Now the reason these are called barbecue peas is because you cook the packet either on a barbecue grill or over hot coals. Your cook time will vary based on how hot your coals are, but generally takes us about 10 minutes.

The peas steam themselves in the packet and come out tender and delicious. The seasonings mixed with the sweet flavor of the peas themselves makes this a sweet/spicy side dish that goes great with any meat cooked over coals. Or by themselves because you share my unnatural pea love.

"But, Mia? What if it isn't summer? Or grilling weather?" I'm so glad I imagined you asking that theoretical reader!

If you're trapped indoors I suggest you try:

Fwigf Skillet Peas

You need:

Olive oil
Sugar snap or snow peas in the pod
minced garlic
a small finely diced onion
salt
pepper
a pinch of sugar (trust me, I won't lead you astray. Well, I won't lead you far)

In a skillet heat the olive oil over medium high head. Add your onion and garlic. Saute them until the onions are clear. Add your peas and season with the salt and pepper to taste and add your pinch of sugar. Saute everything together until your onions are caramelized and your pea pods are bright green and tender.

This is a sweeter side dish so I find it goes really well with spicy meats, or over crisp green salad if you're not carnivorous.

There you have it my dears. Go forth and eat peas.

2 Months of Gardening in One Post. Also Pickles.

Ok, here goes.

The day we got access to Fwigf we planted up everything motioned in my last post, as well as Russet The-Potato-That-Should-Not-Be (it was a commercial russet potato that sprouted, I said 'what the heck' and planted it in my yard. Then transplanted it to Fwigf. After transplanting I was told by another gardener you aren't supposed to transplant potatoes. Oops. But he seems to be doing well regardless). I was a bit concerned about my seedlings, since they were tiny, Fwigf looked huge, and I was convinced everything was going to die. Short version? It didn't.

Long version:

We lost two heads of lettuce to Jerkface. They were planted right in the front, so I wasn't surprised they were gone. They were small, easy to eat, and planted where they were essentially an offering to the wildlife to leave the rest of my crops alone. Even with that loss I'm currently suffering a lettupalooza.

We experienced critical Pea failure. Of the 9 plants I planted only 2 continue to grow. Peas are a cool weather crop, and do better being planted either in an area with fewer hours of direct sunlight OR early enough in the season that it's still below 80F on average. Fwigf in June is not that place. My backyard however apparently *is*. So I have peas from the tiny garden I'd planted out back before getting Fwigf.

In order to provide the tomatoes, cucumbers, and beans with support, without having to buy individual cages for each plant (which adds up quickly) we built a rope trellis for each. I got the idea out of The Backyard Homestead (full citation at bottom). Basically how a rope trellis works is you get two long/tall garden stakes (we used green fencing stakes from Lowes, they were about $3 each) per row of things you want to give support to. Then we took cotton clothes line ($2 from the dollar store) and ran the clothes line between the two stakes. We tied to one end, ran the line to the other stake, cut it, tied the end, then repeated back and forth up the stake. The fence stakes we used had holes in them at regular intervals so we pulled the cord through the holes and tied knots to keep them in place. For the tomatoes that's all the needed. We wove the growing plants between the strings and they are doing fine. that's about 7 or 8 tomato plants supported for roughly the cost of one cage.

The cucumbers and beans got an extra step. We tied clothesline going vertical in addition to the horizontal lines. This created a net that give the cucumber tendrils more places to cling, and gives the beans more support between horizontal cords. Again each trellis comes out to supporting 7 or 8 plants for the cost of a single tomato cage. And they're reusable, at the end of the season we just need to pull the old plants off, roll the stakes up in the netting, and set them in the basement until next year. They take up less room than a whole pile of tomato cages, and when the cord breaks or gets too old to be trustworthy we can just replace that as opposed to the whole thing.

Directions for making a rope trellis can be found here: http://www.ehow.com/how_12152993_make-rope-trellis.html

Trellises have the added benefit of letting you garden vertically. Which saves space and lets you can cram more plants into your available space. More plants in an available space means a higher yield and a higher return on investment. Any vining plant can be grown vertically. The amount of support it needs depends on how heavy the plant itself is. Next year I'm doing a heavy duty trellis to support pumpkins. And then planting those suckers right at the front of my garden to give bit of privacy to working in my garden and discourage Jerkface from eating my lettuce. And to stop this from shading out everything else I'm growing.

We've also hand to mound up our potatoes. I've never grown potatoes before (neither has Husband) so this is an experiment. Potatoes keep growing and reaching and putting out more roots (which is where the edible bits grow) for as high as you mound them before they flower. They grow a little bit, you throw a little more dirt around the base, and so on. This eventually means that you need something to hold all that dirt in place. I've seen a lot of different suggestions. Everything from commercial potato cages (which are expensive) to growing potatoes in garbage cans (also more money than I want to spend) to building boxes around them gradually to hold the dirt as you add it. Think Lincoln Logs or Legos. Husband and I debated all of these options. Including getting Legos in bulk and building colorful fortresses and castles around our potatoes. Because we are adults and we get to decide what being a grown up means. We ultimately decided to buy some 5 gallon buckets from the hardware store and cut the bottoms off. Those seem to be working for now.

Totally doing Legos next year though.

Right! I promised pickles. My backyard garden is currently experiencing cucumber manifest destiny. I harvested a dozen cucumbers a couple of days ago. And since this blog is about preserving food, rather than making sculptures out of a material prone to rotting thus making a commentary on the nature of life and beauty, I decided to pickle them.

First I made refrigerator pickles. I found a recipe online but ended up modifying it so heavily that it bares little resemblance to the original. Therefore I give you:

Fwigf Refrigerator Pickles

You need:

1 pint jar
3 decent sized cucumbers
1/3 cup apple cider vinegar
2/3 cup water
1/4 cup salt
Sprig of dill
1 tsp minced garlic
1/2 a medium onion

Put your water, vinegar, and salt into a pan and bring to a boil. While that is heating wash your cucumbers and cut off the ends, then cut them into spears or slices, whatever you want the final shape of your pickle to be. Cut your onion into chunks. Put your cucumbers, onion, dill, and garlic into your warmed and sterilized jar. You want the glass hot so you don't temperature shock it. Once your brine has come to a boil and dissolved the salt pour it into the jar with everything else. Screw the lid on and let it sit over night so the glass can cool down slowly. Again, temperature shock is bad. Once it's room temperature to the touch put your jar in the fridge. These will last roughly 2-3 months (or as long as it takes for you to stuff them all in your face, whichever comes first.) The pickled onion chunks are also tasty.

Perhaps you are running out of room in your fridge? Maybe you just want pickles that will last longer? In that case I give you:

Fwigf Shelf Stable Pickles

You need:

Everything listed in the refrigerator pickle recipe. Also either : A. a commercial water bath canner or B. A pot big enough to put your jar into without it touching the sides, and with enough room above it to have 2 inches of water over the top of the lid. Also a hand towel, ladle, and oven mitt.

For this the jar you are using needs to be a canning jar. One that seals. You know those mason jars with the two part lids? Yeah. Those. I found mine at Tractor Supply Company, but in the fall you can also find them at grocery stores and (if you must) Wal-Mart. And through all powerful Google.

Put your jar and lids in a smaller pot filled with room temperature water, slowly bring to a boil (again temperature shock is NOT your friend), this will kill off any bacteria that might be living in the jar/lid pieces that would spoil your pickles while they live on a shelf. Prepare your brine, onion and cucumbers the same as before.

Now if you're using a commercial water bath canner follow those instructions.

If you're using my 'giant pot and a towel' canner: lay the towel at the bottom of the pot, set the full jar on the towel, away from the sides of the pot. Add enough water to cover the jar, plus two inches over it. Bring the whole thing to a boil and keep it boiling for 10 minutes. Your 10 minutes doesn't start until it starts boiling. If at any point your pot stops boiling, bring it back to a boil and start your count over.

When you've let it boil for 10 minutes turn off the heat and allow the water to cool for about 20 minutes or so. I did this to avoid temperature shock, and because I realized I had nothing to pull the blazing hot jars OUT of the water with. So I decided to let them think about what they've done while I scrambled around to figure out what the heck to do. Once you've finished that, realize you got your ladle and oven mitt out because I told you that you'd need one. Ladle out enough water to be able to safely grab the jar.

Set your jar on a towel in a draft free area. Let it sit over night. In the morning check the lid, if it's suctioned down (doesn't Pop back and forth when you push on it) you're sealed and you can set it on your self. If it isn't suctioned down put it in your fridge and eat them within a month or two.

Mission Statement

This year I began gardening in earnest. I also began looking at preserving food beyond just putting something in the refrigerator. I have been making a ton of posts on my social media sites about what is going on in my garden, what my pickling recipes are, how I making things, and I decided to start this blog to have it all in one place.

This is where you will find updates from Fwigf (the name of my garden). It will be a collection of what I'm growing, how I'm growing it, how much produce I got out of it, and how I laid it down for later eating. I am growing my garden specifically to cut down on the costs of food, my goal is to grow as much food as I can, as cheaply as possible. If I found a tip online I will post a link to the place I found it, if I found it in a book I will have a running annotated bibliography, complete with ISBIN numbers if you want to find the book yourself. If the tip or recipe came from a family member or friend it will be credited to that person. If it's something I decided to try for the hell of it then that'll be mentioned too.

What is Fwigf?

Fwigf stands for two things: Field Where I Grow Fucks (when it is barren and lifeless) and Field Where I Grow Food (when it is not). Fwigf is a 400sqft plot of land in my local community garden. If I tried to grow everything at home I'd lose at least half my crop to my much beloved, yet very assholeish dogs. I highly recommend looking for community garden in your area if you don't have space to garden at home. If there isn't one near you? Don't worry, I'll also be adding tips and information on container gardening for apartments/urban areas. You can get a surprising amount of food from a stunningly small space.

The community garden is an organic practices only garden. Which means I can't use any synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, or weed killers. Fertilizers that I can use are things like compost, manure, fish emulsions, that sort of thing. Weed control can be done by pulling weeds by hand, or laying down landscaping fabric. You won't find any reviews on MiracleGrow(tm) or Scotts(tm) here.

Your growing rules will vary by garden. Obviously if you're in your yard then you can grown whatever you want. My community garden limits me to non-invasive species (no mint, no oregano, no Jerusalem Artichokes ect), no trees, no cane fruit (raspberries, black berries ect), and nothing that takes more than a year to mature (no asparagus or anything like that). The reasons for these rules boil down to being considerate of your fellow gardeners. Your wonderful apple tree may shade out your neighbor's tomato patch, your Artichokes won't stay in your patch and your neighbors may not want to spend the next 5 seasons pulling those nutrient hogs out of their own gardens, you may not have your patch next year and you don't want to leave someone who hates asparagus an unwelcome surprise when they try to plant their lettuce. Always check your community garden's rules before getting your heart set on planting something if you go the same route I did.

So that's it. That's the purpose of this blog. Sit back and enjoy if you want to, or get out a note book and a pen and dust off your library card. Either way this should be fun.